BLOOD IN THE WIRE

I want to get this down here instead of explaining it again in six different replies later, because people always ask the same thing when the words missing time show up and I am tired of doing the polite version of the answer, there is no music sting, no soft fade to black, none of the show stuff, its a clock that says one number and a body that remembers a different one, and I have kept dates on this kind of thing since before this page even existed (the truck pages are still up, check the dates on those against this one, they line up closer than anyone wants to admit), so what happened this week is not new for me, it is just the first time I sat down and wrote the actual number instead of rounding it off in my head like I usually do. Wednesday, no, I keep saying Wednesday because the truck comes Wednesdays now, but the day itself is the part I cant actually swear to. I left the house at 6:10, I always leave at 6:10, alarm and everything, and the drive to the depot is eleven minutes, I have timed it more then a dozen times on more than one clock, and I got out of the car and the dash said 7:32.

Seventy eight minutes gone out of an eleven minute drive. Not almost an hour, an hour and eighteen, and I checked the dash twice because the first read felt like somebody's idea of a joke, second time it STILL said 7:32. Thats the number. Write it down if you dont believe me, I already did, twice, dash and phone both. My dad used to leave notes on the fridge in grease pencil, the kind that comes off if you press a thumbnail into it, so nothing he ever wrote lasted the week. Anyway.

They knew, I think, because the truck was sitting in the visitor row when I finally pulled in, a row that truck never uses, recyling logo half peeled off the door same as always, and the guy inside didnt get out, just sat there with the window up like sitting there was the job. Thats twice this month in that row. Twice. Coincidence, probably, except two times in one month in a row a vehicle has no business being in stops being a coincidence and starts being a route. Check your own dash next time an hour goes missing off a morning that shouldnt have room for it, see how close your number lands to mine, then tell me its nothing.

I dont sleep right the night after one of these and I know thats probably connected, the gone time and the not sleeping, knowing that doesnt make either one explain itself though, and sorry for the wall of text, I just needed the number written down somewhere that isnt only in my head for once. No photo this time. Didnt think to, which is its own kind of wrong given what I usually remember to do. Still havent found the eleven minutes the drive should have taken. Still looking at the dash.

The camera in the wash is not the one on the pole out front, that one's camera two fifty seven, still up, still counting, I am not conflating the two of them, I know people do that, they read one page on this site and think the whole thing is one lens watching one street. This is a different camera. Reconyx. Bought it in March at the surplus place off the highway because the girl at the counter told me, unprompted, that it was the same model the county used for the wash monitoring after the flood advisory two years back, which I did not ask her, she just said it, and I noted that at the time and I am noting it again now.

It fired at 1:55 in the morning. Three frames. The counter in the corner of the image says so itself, M 3/3, meaning the sensor thinks it caught something three separate times before it gave up, and I have gone through all three, more than once, and there is nothing in any of them. No deer. No dog. No raccoon doing whatever a raccoon does in a wash at two in the morning. Just the stand of saplings by the culvert lit up white by the flash and the black behind them going nowhere I can print out and hand to somebody. The manual is specific about this. I read the whole thing twice. The sensor needs a heat differential AND motion, both, not one, so it isnt a leaf, it isnt wind moving a leaf, thats the answer people reach for and I did the reading so I dont have to reach for it.

Seventy six degrees that night, the overlay says, and I remember it was hot because the cooler kept cycling and I was up anyway, which is its own thing I already wrote about and wont get into again here. Three frames in under two minutes and then nothing until the battery check at dawn. The reset time on this model is eight seconds. Eight seconds between frames, minimum, the camera cant fire faster than that even if it wanted to. So whatever was standing in front of it stood there through two full resets. On purpose. Or it doesnt know what eight seconds is and just kept happening to still be there every time the window opened again, which I have genuinely tried to decide between and cannot. Checked the mud under the saplings the next morning anyway, out of habit. Nothing printed. No track. Fits either way honestly, doesnt rule either one out. They know the reset time better than I do apparently.

Anyway. The county reset the garbage route again. Thursday now instead of Friday, and before that it was Wednesday for a while, then back to Friday, now Thursday, third change this year and nobody at the county will explain why a route changes on its own schedule like that.